


picture me and you

by kwritten



Series: Femlash February 2016 [11]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who (2005), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, F/F, Stargirls Universe, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 03:21:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6103180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for the prompt: btvs/dw/tvd, stargirls verse<br/>elena (&jeremy) pack up their worlds and burn down their house sometime before s3 and that is the very short version as to how elena becomes a barista at dawn's campus coffee shop in england</p>
            </blockquote>





	picture me and you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clytemnestras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clytemnestras/gifts), [nereid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nereid/gifts), [lionheartedgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionheartedgirl/gifts).



> lol this sort of ran away from me???
> 
>  
> 
> the things we do to each other are illegal in at least 50 countries

 

That the only thing Jeremy really had to say about their new life was, _god I can't believe you have three girlfriends and I can't even get one_, was either a blessing or some strange omen of the shit that they had been through.

That Clara responded with a not-so-helpful, _maybe you're looking for the wrong type of person?_ and that Amy jumped in to say, _set your bar a little lower, bro_ , at the same time that Dawn told him pertly, _dudes, dude_ , probably set the tone for something a bit less like transition and more like inclusion in a way she wasn't sure was either good _or_ bad.

 

 

_Living is living is living is living is death is dead is all around and things that shouldn’t be immortal shouldn’t be living shouldn’t be dead are – here… writing is writing is written is finished is finalized is left she left she’s gone she’s finished and incomplete she is everything and nothing and no one and running away is standing still is waiting in line for coffee – is everything is lines and lines and standing still while moving slowly while the world spins so fast she feels as though she may fall off and there isn’t enough time time time is timely is fragmented is timey wimey is unknowable unquantified unjustified there is no justice there is nothing but standing in lines for coffee._

 

 

  
"This is a good idea, Jer," Elena whispered to her brother absently, braiding and unbraiding her long hair.

Jeremy rubbed her calves gently where they were slung across his lap and turned towards her, catching a glimpse of a airplane wing and the dark night sky through the tiny window behind her shoulder, "Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

She looked down at the picture on her phone of her two best friends and winced inwardly.

_Herself._

She only had to convince herself.  
~~She only had to deceive herself.~~

 

 

_Moving is moving is moving is shit for wheels this isn’t writing this is madness this is Alice in a hole in the ground talking to a man telling riddles riddles riddles are riddles are the whole world is a riddle am I a writing desk are you is anyone a writing desk can you fold yourself down into a square shield for me to place my paper upon will your flesh hold the shape I give it will your skin catch my words like a tattoo or will it wash away in the shower like the rest of the sins no one will ever be able to prove you are guilty of that I am guilty of that guilt is the most freeing sensation of them all._

_Are there words for this is there a phrase is there a hidden message inside of a word that can tell the world what distraction is what pain is what strife is what this body this useless fleshless body with blood blood blood pounding through its veins like that even means something is there a word for “my body is a body is a vessel of blood and matter and it is not my own” is there a word for that besides me?_

 

 

She enrolled in a few classes at the college under the name _Tatiana Flemming_ for the one that started it all and her mother, her other mother, her most recent mother in a line of dead mothers and got a job at a coffee shop not far from campus. She let Jeremy convince her to do home-schooling while he worked nights moving boxes from one truck to another. He grew taller and broader every day and seemed to be happy and so she took that as a positive sign or something. He went by Rick now and they pretended that meant nothing at all.

They adjusted. They started living again.

They didn’t talk about their old lives or their old homes or their old friends ~~gone friends gone friends~~ and never mentioned out loud the _Michaelson_ on the mailbox outside their stylishly furnished flat or the fruit baskets from _Petrova_ that appeared every few weeks.

(Katherine was the best of them all at hiding. She was even better at revenge. She took pride in living a life on Klaus’ dime, filching money from dozens of his accounts and moving them all around the world, furnishing flats in countries under his name and paid by his assistant of the century. _The thing about living too long and having too much_ , she confided seconds before pushing Elena towards her departing flight and twirling around to her own, _is that it’s terribly easy to get ripped off._ They might have to leave in the middle of the night, she warned, but it was going to feel so fucking good while it lasted. And she had at least five contingency plans for every worst-case scenario.)

They stopped looking over their shoulder and they put clothes in drawers and have a Chinese place that knows their regular order and she has coffee people that know her ~~fake~~ ~~new~~ ~~borrowed~~ name and he has a basketball game on the weekends with some guys from work.

She stopped being surprised when someone called her _Tatiana_ and that was the day she realized that they not only _could_ do this – they already were.

 

 

_She says she found herself in a_ choose your own adventure _fairy tale book only she was both the hero and the author and they said no no no there are rules there is a hero and a villain and an author and a damsel and she laughed and laughed and laughed her laughter is fireworks is fairies bursting into life is bubbles floating away into the air and fluffy clouds and she doesn’t care there are people who care about things but she is careless and reckless she wrote herself a husband and a hero and a box to run away in and she ran away and she chose her own adventure._

_She says she found herself hand-in-hand with time and time loved her and time held her and time was her and she was time and she lived and lived and lived and had a thousand times and a thousand faces that was her face her face her face rescuing the same man a man a man a man a man with two hearts and no heart and too many hearts a man who wasn’t a man after all and she wasn’t just a girl there is no such thing as girls they are too slippery and wild and unknowable a girl is just an indeterminate thing with sharp teeth and sweet smiles and sharp claws and soft hands because girls can walk hand-in-hand with time and live a thousand lives and still fall from the sky._

_She says she was written instead of born and she fell in love with a girl who wrote her own adventure and made herself a hero and a villain and ate everything else up with her sharp teeth she says she is timeless and ageless and nothing at all just an orb of something pressed into the shape of a girl and she fell in love with a girl of a thousand lives a girl across time a girl that laughs in the face of time she says she was written and so she writes._

 

 

Elena – who was sometimes Tatiana because she imagined Tatiana was fragile and delicate and soft and kind; who was sometimes Katherine because Katherine was strong and fearless and unbreakable – found that nearly a year had gone by without her even noticing. One day she looked up and her boss – a woman about her same height with terrifyingly green eyes and long dark hair – was looking at her and smiling as if she knew all of ~~Elena’s~~ Tatiana’s secrets.

“I’m sorry, what?” Elena blinked first at Dawn and then at the empty shop around her. The tables were clean, the floors had been swept, there was fresh creamer and milk in the ceramic pitchers and the sugar container was full, it was that lull between lunch and the three o’clock coffee withdrawal rush.

“I didn’t say anything,” Dawn chuckled a little.

“Oh,” Elena looked down at her feet and then back up at her boss.

She was struck with the sudden sensation of not know _who_ to be.

Elena.  
Tatiana.  
Katherine.

The door swung open and a small brunette in heels carrying stacks of paper flew through the door like a hurricane. Elena instinctively began making her a small pot of tea – something floral when she was wearing a hat, something rich when the weather was cool, something strong when she had papers – and grabbed the lemon poppy seed muffin from where she had hid the last one earlier that morning, putting it on a plate and setting it out on the counter.

She didn’t see Dawn smiling at her curiously, didn’t see her shooting the short woman a curious look, didn’t see the brunette blush attractively when her order was ready before she even bustled over to the counter.

 

 

_Girls are good girls are kind girls are soft girls are weak fuck you fuck yourself stick your own dick where the sun don’t shine my girls are tough my girls are sharp my girls are strong my girls are girls are **girls** are wild they howl to the moon are wolves hiding in the dark are tougher than anything waiting in the shadows are terrifying don’t tell me girls are good girls are kind girls are soft girls will eat you up and still be hungry for more you should be scared scaredy cat scaredy cat baker’s man bake me a cake as fast as you can roll it and pat it and mark it with a _G_ and throw yourself in the oven because my baby wants three._

 

 

“You’re Tatiana, right?” the redhead with impossibly long legs and an impossible smile and freckles across the bridge of her nose that Elena wants to kiss because she’s sure they taste like sunlight, was smiling across the counter at her. Elena already had her vanilla latte ready to pour into her decorative to-go cup because she was always at the counter at nine o’clock on the dot.

Elena looked down at the nametag on her apron and shrugged.

Clearly that was her “name” for the time being.

She snuck a chocolate biscotti into a brown paper bag and typed in the employee discount on the cash register after handing over the latte.

The redhead leaned across the counter, placing her chin in her hands and smiling up at her, “I’m Amy.”

“Hello Amy,” she sounded a bit like a robot. Dawn had tried to teach _Tatiana_ to sound more perky, but it didn’t really stick, she always sounded a little bit dry, a little tired, a little distracted. Maybe that said more about Elena than Tatiana, but she couldn’t point to the lines anymore, where one girl began and the other ended.

Amy winked, “You’re too damn hot, you know that right?”

Dawn swung her arm around Tatiana’s shoulders and beamed, “We should report her.”

Amy stood up and appraised them both, matching girls in matching uniforms with long brown hair and hooded eyes and soft faces and hard edges and long limbs and hidden things lurking lurking lurking. “I should _date_ her.”

Elena blanched and Tatiana blushed and Katherine preened.

Dawn shrugged, “Maybe you should.”

“When’s her shift over?”

They spoke over her head as though she wasn’t there, as though she couldn’t respond, ~~as though they knew she wouldn’t.~~

“Whenever I say so.”

Amy’s eyes glinted, “Say now.”

“Leave princess, be back before the commute rush. Those soccer moms need their coffee.”

“It’s called football here, ya dirty Yank,” Amy shot over her shoulder, dragging Elena by the arm and ripping her apron off at the same time.

They took a bus to a part of town ~~Elena~~ Tatiana had never been before, Amy chattering in her ear the whole time. Amy bought her street food from a vendor that spoke a questionable language and looked a little more green than a human typically should. They traipsed down dark alleys and hid under a doorway during a sudden rain shower. She didn’t make it back in time for the six o’clock rush, Amy dropped her off at her flat closer to midnight than she had been out in all the time she’d been in London.

Amy kissed her and it tasted like the entire city was saying hello to her for the first time.

 

 

_Princesses live in towers live in castles live in beautiful villas live in squatty flats above Chinese restaurants and sling coffee and play with their dog in the park on the weekend and cry over terrible cliché movies while getting popcorn all over the couch that will be found months later while searching the cushions for spare bus change and out will come out dry little leftovers of white snowflakes will appear in her palm and she’ll remember that she is a goddamn fucking princess and once she cried on the couch curled up in someone’s arms with her face pressed against their warm neck and that’s alright that’s okay sometimes a warrior standing in five feet of blood needs to feel like a princess._

 

 

She went out with Amy three times in a week and then didn’t see her for two. She was a model, her face on billboards, her hands in perfume adds, her freckles haunting every place Elena went.

The brunette shyly told her that her name was Clara and started telling her about her students, which made Elena almost feel like maybe one day in one of her many lives _teaching_ could have been a delightful thing that maybe she’d like to try. It filled her with a hope she didn’t know she had to see glitter smeared on Clara’s cheek or a feather caught in her hair or dark circles under her eyes during midterm season, because there was a person out there that loved their job and _cared_ and they were normal and human and she had almost forgotten what humanity could look like.

Clara eventually moved her grading up to the bar overlooking the counter, so that she could watch ~~Elena’s~~ Tatiana’s practiced hands preparing drink after drink after drink. Dawn teased her when Clara wasn’t around, “Practically a year and now _two_ girls vying for your affection.” And the Katherine part of her wanted to brag, but that was the least practical part of her heart so she didn’t listen to it.

(Maybe once or twice Dawn’s arm brushed hers when it didn’t need to or they stood closer to each other than necessary when no one was around and maybe when Dawn’s fingers lingered against hers when they reached for the same thing, she didn’t think too hard about it.)

 

 

_Touch her touch her touch her she is drowning she is burning she is suffocating there is water in her mouth there is smoke in her lungs she is crying she is screaming she is so silent so terribly silent there has never been anything as silent and sad and frantic as her screaming into the abyss touch her and make her real touch her and bring her back to life is she dead is she dead has she ever been living is life something she knows or just watches is there anything in this world she hasn’t touched but couldn’t feel would she feel a woman reaching out to love her or is she a frozen slab of ice a pillar of salt did she look back when she should have pressed forward or is the woman who loves her behind behind behind calling for her to turn back but all she can do it press on because her heart is dead anyway just touch her._

 

 

“Hey do you think you can close up on your own tonight?”

 ~~Elena~~ ~~Tatiana~~ She looked out at the night crowd, hunched over their laptops and shooting anyone who did so much as cough a dirty look, and shrugged, “I guess so.”

Dawn laid a hand on Elena’s arm and smiled, “I promised my … girlfriend that I’d take her out to dinner.” Elena felt a pang of envy. For the girlfriend or for Dawn having a _someone_ or for both, she wasn’t sure. For the ease of the phrase _mine she’s mine all mine_ lingering on Dawn’s lips. “She’s been out of town,” Dawn explained, leaning forward and narrowing her eyes, though Elena hadn’t asked for an explanation. 

“Take her someplace nice,” ~~Tatiana~~ Elena said softly before turning away to help the burry-eyed freshman at the counter with her third cup of coffee that night. The spot on her arm where Dawn’s hand once had been felt cold. She discreetly poured the decaf and heard Dawn snort as she traipsed out the door. 

About a half hour before she needed to start sweeping underneath people’s feet to gently urge them to leave, a girl she recognized from her History class handed her a journal with a mumbled, _found this…_. 

Elena flipped open the cover to see if there was a name on the inside, some sort of identifying marker to let her know how to return it to the author. There was nothing. A rough sketch over the _THIS JOURNAL BELONGS TO: __________________ showed a pair of girls disappearing into an old-fashioned phone box surrounded by green stars. She smiled and started to flip through it. The pages were full of sketches – mostly of girls but some monsters and cityscapes that looked otherworldly – and a messy scrawl that paid no attention to the light lines printed on the pages as a guide for words. A phrase halfway down one of the earlier pages, highlighted in lime green and circled several times, caught her eye.

****_ THIS IS NOT A NOVEL AND I AM NOT TELLING YOU A STORY  
I AM NOT AN AUTHOR AND THIS IS NOT FOR READING  
JUST LISTEN AND MAYBE YOU WILL HEAR  
ALL THE WORDS I CANNOT FIND _

 

 

_Boxes and boxes and boxes of space fly through the air or are buried in the ground what is the difference between a girl buried in the ground surrounded by soil and worms and decay and the girl buried in the star surrounded by stars and broken promises and adventures no no no stop I’m writing this all wrong I’m not writing at all this is not a novel and I am not telling you a story I am not an author and this is not for reading just listen and maybe you will hear all the words I cannot find about the difference between a girl that cannot die and a girl that has died a thousand times and a girl that wrote her own death to ensure it will happen what is the difference between being tired and being done and what is the difference between reading and writing and when do the words make sense there are boxes in the sky and there are boxes in the ground and they are full of words there are no people at all there are no girls there are only words the words on this page the words in my mind my mind is slipping away this is not the story you are looking for._

 

 

She read the entire thing cover to cover sitting cross-legged on the counter next to the register. One other student in the shop blinked up at her blearily around sunrise and whispered, _am I dreaming or are you fired?_

She didn’t get fired. She swept and cleaned and txted a frantic Jeremy ruefully and read the notebook cover to cover before the morning rush. 

She didn’t even notice Dawn’s smirk when she dashed out the door. 

Elena, only Elena, hugged the book to her chest the whole walk home through the morning drizzle and slept twelve hours with it still in her arms. She woke up and poured herself a cup of coffee and Elena, only Elena, picked up a pen and put it to paper because there was something breathless and frantic inside of her that wouldn’t be still. 

 

 

_She is free she is weightless she is a miracle she is ~~nothing at all~~ **everything she shouldn’t be she is impossible** there is no such thing as a miracle there is only the ~~known~~ world **they made** and how she fits her whole body into the box someone else ~~made~~ **wrote** for her and she’s crying ~~she’s crying she’s always been crying~~ **she’s screaming she’s always been screaming** there has never been time or life before her tears fell **and her screams rang through the air** she drank up the river **the river killed her she drank up the river to live to live to live to bring herself back to life** the river that men will later call stars and she cried it out to create **more** life she is a mother **she is lonely** ~~she is a monster~~ they will call her a monster and they will hate her and they will chain her to the world **and tell her it is because they love her but it is** because there is no world without her and she wants to run run run wild back to her river **she wants to catch DEATH in her arms and make love to it under the stars that were her tears were the river that she drank when it tried to kill her when she was the only one in the whole universe** wants to take back her tears and turn it all into death because death is her home now **(she loved death she loves death she loves her reflection she is death she loves herself she gave up being life when the first tear fell)** but they chained her down to the earth ~~beneath her feet~~ that is no longer hers and kissed her and told her they loved her but all they wanted was to stop her from running because if she runs they will have to learn ~~how to live without her~~ that she lives better without them._

 

 

“Whatcha got there?” Clara teased, watching Elena slash through the words on the page in a foreigner’s hand and scribble her own words above them. “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

~~Katherine~~ ~~Tatiana~~ Elena paused and pursed her lips, “My mom and I … I used to _want_ to be a writer, I haven’t thought about it in a long time.”

Clara shook her head ruefully, “Of course, I always fall for writers.”

~~Katherine~~ ~~Tatiana~~ Elena blushed and hid the book in her purse. 

She didn’t say, _I’m falling for you, too._  
She didn’t say, _This is the first time my lips haven’t touched a lie in over a year._

She did say, “You have terrible luck, everyone knows you shouldn’t fall in love with a writer.”

And Dawn laughed. 

 

 

_She whispered in his ear secrets of the ~~universe~~ **heart** that he claimed he had taught her first but he was just a silly ~~doctor~~ ~~**vampire**~~ **BOY** and ~~doctors~~ **boys** may be **old** big but they ~~are not everything~~ cannot fill up every space and they are not as big or as bold as they think they are there are always spaces between them beneath them above them they can only see their own bodies and think themselves the biggest ~~vampires~~ boys are silly that way and when she walked out the door that lead to ~~his whole life his heart~~ **her own history her childhood her life** but she knew was actually her soul in the shape of a ~~box~~ **house** she whispered to herself a secret she never dared tell him and he was never ready to know and whispered it to a ~~girl with soft eyes and a pen in her hand~~ **a book without a home instead because ~~girls~~ **silence** keep **s** secrets best everyone knows that **and she needed to keep this secret from herself the most**.**_

 

 

“What’s this!?” Amy snatched the book out of Elena’s hands and spit her tongue out at her protests. Elena felt her heart lurch, somehow over the past week it had felt as though the book had become part of her, the words she read and wrote there telling a secret she wasn’t ready to expose to herself and couldn’t bear to see in another’s hands.

After a moment of flipping through the book with a furrowed brow, Amy swore softly under her breath, “Well fuck I lost that bet.”

“Which bet?” Clara came skipping into the shop, arms empty of paperwork because somehow summer had already arrived and she wasn’t teaching anymore. She slung an arm around Amy’s waist and peeked at the book curiously. 

“Hey, love?” Amy said softly after a moment, her eyes filled with tears. “You were more than right.”

Dawn came up behind Elena, “I told you so.”

~~Katherine~~ ~~Tatiana~~ Elena shifted her feet and looked back and forth between the three women, confused. 

“That’s mine,” Dawn said softly. 

And then maybe Amy reached her finger forward to lift Elena’s chin with one of her long fingers and kissed her softly on the lips and then maybe Clara’s eyes filled with tears and she whispered something like _I hoped it wasn’t true_ because there is something comforting about someone that understands just exactly who you are and something terribly sad about knowing that someone else has felt that level of pain.

 

 

_Are there words for this is there a phrase is there a hidden message inside of a word that can tell the world what distraction is what pain is what strife is what this body this useless fleshless body with blood blood blood pounding through its veins like that even means something is there a word for “my body is a body is a vessel of blood and matter and it is not my own” is there a word for that besides ~~me **you and me and me and you and her too**?~~_

 

 

Dawn goes running with Jeremy in the dark hours after his shift with the boxes and the opening of her shop. Elena writes on the couch Amy writes on the couch Dawn writes on the floor while Jeremy plays video games on the floor with Dawn’s feet in his lap and Clara bakes something with more chocolate than maybe is legal. Amy introduces Jeremy to girls she thinks he’d like and boys she thinks he’d like and gets him dressed for dates and Clara coos over his art and frames it and hangs it on the wall and takes it to her classroom to show her students. 

And it feels like family or like they won’t be burning any houses down anytime soon.

“If running is something you have to do,” Dawn says solemnly, “then we _all_ run.”

If she leaves in the middle of the night, they won’t forgive her and she couldn’t live with that. If she dies in the middle of a flight they won’t forgive her and she couldn’t be undead with that on her shoulders. They keep her human they are the furthest thing from human she’s ever met outside of ~~Mystic Falls~~.

She wakes up one morning and paints the empty wall in the kitchen a bright shiny yellow. They wake up and admire the green words she painted near the ceiling.

_THIS ISN’T YOUR NOVEL_  
I’M NOT YOUR AUTHOR  
THERE ARE NO HEROES HERE  
WRITE YOUR OWN DAMN HAPPY ENDING 

**Author's Note:**

> Also written for FemslashBB's Feb Monthly Challenge: Meet Cute


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